The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
According to the reports by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 35,092 people died and 2.44 million people were injured in crashes on U.S. roadways. Among the reasons for critical pre-crash event attributed to drivers are the recognition error, decision error, and performance error. A large portion of these errors are related to driving behaviors of the drivers. It is believed the relationship between driver behaviors and driver errors are generally applicable also to driving outside the U.S.
In the past four decades, significant progresses have been made in the safety design of the vehicles, e.g., seat belts, air bags, collapsible steering columns, and so forth have been introduced. In recent years, these progresses further included computer-assisted driving, such as anti-lock brakes, anti-skid and so forth. Among these progresses are the introductions of the On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) port and the subsequent On-Board Diagnostic II (OBD-II) port, which has been used extensively in collecting data for vehicle diagnostics and computer-assisted driving. These design improvements, together with other measures, have contributed to the steady decline of the traffic fatality rate from 5.30 to 1.12 per 100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). But more can be done to enhance driving safety.